Phalenopsis with genetic issues?
Hello,
About two years ago some friends visiting us gave us away a nice but still quite commonly looking Phalaenopsis just bought in a shop.
At that time I was just starting to grow some orchids, so very little experience there, but I immediately noticed that the plant had something that looked different to me. It had:
- quite a larger number of leaves quite over-crowded (but still of the typical size)
- a large number (5 or 6) very long (about 50-60 cm) flower stems
- quite a large number of orchid buds, but most of them weirdly located just at the end of the stems
- It came with a label stating something like: high quality species, 5 star species, bla, bla, bla...
- in the purchasing box it made really a strong/good impression of being indeed of higher quality...
After a while, most of the buds fell off and only a handful number of buds made it to become flowers. And there I noticed something else that looked weird to me: the size of the flower did not match at all the expectations of the size of the leaves and of the stems...
At that time I thought: OK, the plant must have suffered somehow the transition from the shop to my house, next year it will show its full potential. Then I moved it to lava-rock and eventually to S/H. This gave me the opportunity to have a close look at the roots, which were doing great.
Since several months I have it in S/H, with I think optimal growing conditions (including seaweeds, optimal PAR light, probiotics, etc...). Same conditions in which another dozen orchids I have is doing great...
The plant grew some new leaves and incredibly tall stems with a lot of buds...The stems grew from the existing 5-6 stems, reaching up to 60-70 cm tall stems. But then...AGAIN, most of the buds fell off!!! About 90% of the buds fell off, but in a strange way...it was a "maturation problem". More or less at 50% of their maturation/size, 90% of the buds fell off. Those which managed to grow beyond 50% of their size, managed to become a flower. Basically, the success rate of those growing beyond 50% size was 100%. And again the size of the flowers was below expectations...
Any thought on that? I can't attach a picture right now as I am not at my home for a few weeks.
Thanks.
Regards,
Davide
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